User Experience or more specifically ecommerce user experience, (UX) is a crucial aspect for all the user interfaces and is essential when you are dealing with ecommerce applications. Ecommerce businesses these days have become increasingly competitive, and multiple choices can make customer loyalty an impeccable phenomenon. In the present scenario, the online buyers are increasing and they want to explore something new every time they visit your website. This gears up the drive where ecommerce portals must engross a customer up to the extent to make them purchase an item before logging out, which makes UX design trends a decisive factor.

Online retail chains are continuing to progress with the competition where top ecommerce companies like Amazon, Alibaba, Walmart, etc are providing a major benchmark for all other retailers in terms of conducting business and ecommerce best practices. These huge brands offer various perks of one-stop shopping, unmatched selections, low prices, convenient and speedy delivery, free shipping etc. to persuade more consumers to buy products.

To achieve this, the UI/UX designers ought to adopt ecommerce UX designs in such a way that shoppers see what online retailers want to show them. This implies that the landing page contains items that need maximum promotion. Additionally, the natural navigation flow should not get disturbed by headings, containers, or scroll bars.

It’s important to adopt and continuously research ecommerce design trends to ensure that the ecommerce user experience remains enjoyable and effective. Many a time the synergy in the layout of a website, website architecture, design, and functionality end up with rough edges. This is what diffuses the impact on the end-user, which is one of the main reasons for higher bounce rate and low time-on-site metrics. UX and UI both cater to these problems and provide an array of patterns that make navigating a webpage or website, not only user-friendly but also an enjoyable experience.

Investing in user-centered UX design trends and ecommerce UX design is beneficial for users as the act of shopping is not enough anymore, and only the retailers who understand the preferences and behaviors of their audience will succeed. When an individual plans to shop online, all (s)he wants is convenience and flexibility along with the facility of convenient shopping through easy payments, and product delivery modes that have mastered ecommerce to a successful phenomenon. By observing changes in expectations in customers’ ecommerce experience, let’s point at some major hacks which can effectively increase your website visibility, via ecommerce design patterns.

1. Augmented and Virtual Reality

These technologies have always been the talk of the town as they guarantee grand success for online business owners. The concept might seem a little new, but the outcomes are impactful and relatively faster than the traditional methods of purchase. VR deals with the sensation of an individual by allowing him / her to touch and interact with a virtual version of the items he/she wants to buy. This builds up the trust among the users by ensuring a feel-good element whilst clearing all their doubts before making the purchase.

For instance, IKEA Place, an application allows users to see the furniture virtually in their homes through product interactivity. Users can relocate these virtual versions of the product by spinning, recoloring them and then decide if they are going to fit in the interior design of the designated environment.

Even for VR and AR platforms, developers are still using trial and error method to understand the ecommerce design trends and patterns that are relevant here. It’s critical to know where this VR/AR application helps UX / UI developers to know the intent of the user and improve its efficiency. The ecommerce user experience in VR/AR is still a relatively new playing ground, and we yet have to see how beyond the scope of smartphones can this application go.

2. 360-Degree View

If implementing the AR and VR systems in your website and applications appears to be just too difficult, you can try your hands on the 360-degree view pattern for a better UI/UX design. Interacting with the online customers about the products improves the likelihood of their purchase. However, even with this VR and AR innovation, customers cannot physically touch products through a screen. Alternatively, you can get your customers to have the 360-degree product view of even the minute details and an all-around perspective, as they explore the product. Furthermore, a 360 view of the product not only works as a demonstration but gives incentive to the business to inspire other businesses to use these as a means to provide more creative experiences for the user.

3. User-generated Content

Whenever a user visits your website to purchase an item, (s)he is more likely to look for the product reviews along with photos and videos generated by the buyers instead of professional photographs. Henceforth, for better promotion and an increase in sales of your products, you should encourage your customers to share their experiences with the products. Furthermore, you can also tell your clients to share these reviews on social media and monitor them. It’s also a good idea to include brand’s mentions, as content on your website to help your potential clients gain a better perspective of your products.

4. Easy Checkout

Your buyers often get tired when it comes to filling those lengthy forms of information for a one-step payment. This serious problem can lead to a customer cart abandonment situation. To reduce such risks, website designers should look for minimal ecommerce UX designs to gather client information and provide effective options for payment such as credit or debit cards, online banking and even cash on delivery service. This level of flexibility allows shoppers to interact on their terms and have an ecommerce shopping experience that they would love coming back to your website.

5. Target Keywords

This is one of the old and trusted strategies to boost your website’s traffic flow. Targeting keywords are very important for SEO to attract potential customers. When you search for your specific or preferred item in the search bar, the search results show you websites that can satisfy your search criteria. It’s also advised to have a look at your targeted keyword list along with the created accounts for misspelled words. This helps in targeting your customers when they search for your products from their smartphones as it is quite natural to make errors while dealing with touchable devices.

It’s important to analyze your competition, whether it is for an ecommerce store or a design portfolio. Keywords help in mapping out words and mistyped words (in terms of auto-suggestions), in the search to help people find exactly what they are looking for. For instance, ‘ecommerce UX’ and ‘ecommerce UX” pick up automatically. However, words like ‘ecommerce design trends’ and ‘UX design trends’ will pop up results that vary. Hence, adding keywords that relate to the web property are the best UX practice when placing the groundworks of the ecommerce store.

6. Website Security

Every ecommerce website needs some essential security folds which prevent attacks from spammers, hackers and identity thieves. Customers who share their financial information, obviously expect a secured site with HTTPS to assure that their data is safe. It’s good practice to always ask your web designers to recheck all the security factors while designing a website. It is also crucial to test your website components for better functioning to identify pitfalls and rectify errors. Google Analytics will help you figure out the potential area of your website to perform audits and testing.

7. Bounce Rate and Conversion

Bounce rate is generally frightening for your business because it is the session at which the users have left your website without performing any actions on your website. A major concern lies with the poor website UX design which leads to such disasters, and unwanted sessions for website visitors. Great UX design is the one that gets the customers to the right place and informs them about products that fit the keywords they entered in the search engine. The conversion rate is a single metric that determines your website success. It plays an important part in creating the best impressions by building a website based on ecommerce UX best practices.

Final Words

There are of course many ecommerce UX design trends and hacks for UX designs to choose from. It is important to understand and address customer feedback as users experience is directly dependent on their likelihood to complete goals and objectives that have been set on the website. Investing in UX offers many concrete quantitative benefits for your online business, helping you measure the ROI with ease.

It’s also worth mentioning that more often than not, a website’s UI and UX are what differentiates it from other websites. The UX and UI work in harmony with contemporary trends based on behavioral patterns. Some businesses opt for a minimal and functional design. Others may opt for a storytelling narrative by mixing up types of content to keep the reader hooked. So the types of themes used in the UI and UX design will make the difference in turning a website from a ‘hook line and the sinker’ to an experience that is authentic, real and emotionally fulfilling for the user.

Author’s Bio:

Olivia Diaz is working in a Magento development company eTatvaSoft.com. Apart from her professional career, she is more inclined towards blogging and sharing her ideas on a lot of development topics like Magento, Angular and more. She also likes to read about Magento development trends.